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Still looks to me like the vote will have no material financial consequences? “The UK will have to renegotiate 80,000 pages of EU agreements, deciding those to be kept in UK law and those to jettison. British officials have said privately that nobody knows how long this would take, but some ministers say it would clog up parliament for years.” As previously discussed, the drop in oil prices led to increased consumer imports and reduced exports, both of which fundamentally...

Graph 1. Wage levels and vote shares, Brexit. Brad deLong is very annoyed about this Voxeu piece by a whole slew of famous economists, which advises that we, as a consequence of Brexit, have to double down on the Euro. Full disclosure: the piece is also signed by Brad’s academic Bossom Buddy Barry Eichengreen. I agree with the gist and arguments of the piece of deLong: “From my perspective, this piece at Vox.eu makes many too many bows to conventional-wisdom idols with not just feet but...

Gradual deceleration looks to be continuing:Growth here had been increasing, helping to offset the decline in govt. deficit spending, but after the oil capex collapse this measure of credit growth leveled off:Real estate as well as consumer loan growth have also leveled off:This story is all about income here as well. The consumer has been hit hard twice due to the recession and then tax hikes and it’s all ratcheted down a notch each time. Even in the prior recession personal...

from Dean Baker Voters in the United Kingdom caught almost everyone by surprise with their decision to leave the European Union. The push for Brexit was driven by nationalistic, xenophobic and racist sentiments. There is no point in putting a pretty face on it. But this vote is now a fait accompli. The question is how the leadership of the European Union chooses to respond. In the lead up to the Brexit vote, there was much discussion of punishment. Wolfgang Schauble, the finance minister...

Looks like another small decrease as the deceleration continues: Vehicle Sales Forecasts: Sales to be Over 17 Million SAAR again in June By Bill McBride June 24 (Calculated Risk Blog) — The automakers will report June vehicle sales on Friday, July 1st. Note: There were 26 selling days in June, up from 25 in June 2015.From WardsAuto: Forecast: June Sales to Reach 11-Year High A WardsAuto forecast calls for U.S. automakers to deliver 1.57 million light vehicles this month....

Weaker than expected, and turns out it was up in April followed by down in May as previously discussed: HighlightsMay proved to be a generally weak month for the factory sector. Minus signs spread across the durable goods report with total new orders down a very sizable 2.2 percent and ex-transportation orders, which exclude aircraft and vehicles, down 0.3 percent. The worst news comes from capital goods, a sector where weakness points to weakness in business investment and...

I have been criticised by among others, Professor Simon Wren-Lewis, for the earlier blog criticising the economics profession. To bolster my case, am sharing here ex-governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King’s, views on the profession. While his is an “on-the-one-hand-but-on-the-other” approach, nevertheless it is clear on the culpability of the profession. The quotation is from page 3 of his recent book, ‘The End of Alchemy‘ published by Little, Brown in 2016. “Since the crisis,...

If, as a result of Brexit, the economy crashes it will not vindicate the economists, it will simply illustrate once more their failure. We, at Policy Research in Macroeconomics (PRIME) call for an urgent, independent, public inquiry into the economics profession, its role in precipitating both the financial crisis of 2007-9, and the subsequent very slow ‘recovery’. Finally the role of the profession in the run up to the British European referendum campaign.  As this morning illustrates,...

from David Ruccio I know all about how corrupt a city can by. I live in Chicago, the “Capital of Corruption.” And I hear all the time about all those other corrupt cities, most of them located in countries in Latin America, Africa, and Asia, which often fall low in the corruption perceptions indices like the one produced by Transparency International. But for all the talk about transparency and the need to tackle corruption at the 2016 Anti-Corruption Summit in London, the host...

Remember the enthusiasm around last month’s move up? As suspected, it’s reversed and the 3 month average remains negative: HighlightsMay was a weak month based on the minus 0.51 result for the national activity index, one that drives the 3-month average to a minus 0.36 level consistent with below average growth. Production, not employment, is by far the weakest component in May, at minus 0.32 and reflecting contraction in industrial production and factory utilization....